Happy New Year!

It’s time for my traditional listing of the books I read in the previous year (2017). It’s easy to see that I read a lot of cozy mysteries. I tend to regard most of them like potato chips (reliable in story-telling, fun and easy to read by the handful, tasty-though without much nutritional value).

However, a few highlights from the year stand out (a couple of which are actually re-reads for me):

Going Postal by Terry PratchettMy Brother Michael by Mary StewartBurn For Me by Ilona AndrewsAll Shall Be Well by Deborah CrombieThe Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

Did you know that the Fifth Avenue Hotel at Madison Square in New York City, completed in 1859, was a marvel of its time?

The hotel boasted private baths for eight hundred guests, a fireplace in every bedroom, and a staff of four hundred. It quickly surpassed the once-opulent Astor House as THE hotel in New York City’s social scene.

It also had the city’s first steam-powered elevator — “the vertical railroad” — which could carry guests and luggage up to the top (6th) floor. The elevator introduced a change in guest preference to rooms on the upper floors, which were located further away from the noise and smells of the street.

From politicians to entertainers, European royalty to American royalty (the ultra-wealthy), the grand hotels of the Gilded Age played host to the famous of the day. They were sumptuous worlds of luxury and mechanical ingenuity, built on a scale undreamed of just decades earlier.

As part of my celebration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s twentieth anniversary, I thought I’d post a few of my favorite quotes. This isn’t all of them, by any means, but it’s a decent sample. I still reference some of these quotes today (though not necessarily in their original form).

“It’s the end of the world. Everyone dies. It’s rather important, really.”
(Doomed)